Instead of raising taxes on the super-rich, Michigan Republicans are employing dictatorial powers — dissolving local governments and selling off public facilities to private corporations, including, as you’ll find out below, a public school for pregnant teens. This is tea party government in action. This is your pro-life party. They arrest pregnant teens and deprive them of a decent education — instead of taxing the rich. Utterly disgusting…

…Detroit Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced last monththat he was closing eight schools, and selling up to 45 more to charter companies. Among those slated for clsoure was the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school designed for pregnant teens and the only one of its kind in the nation. One reason the announcement came as such a surprise to students and teachers there is that Catherine Ferguson has a stellar track record, boasting 90% graduation rates and 100% college acceptance rates.

Now, via Daily Kos, it appears that protesting teachers, teen mothers, and their children were arrested after staging a peaceful sit-in at the school protesting its closure..

this is just disgusting. With the ways things are going in some of our states currently it makes you wonder where this is heading. The Handmaid’s Tale, anyone? They want to fundamentally alter the way this country works. That’s called being radical. People call people like me radical, but I truly do not want to take away anyone’s rights. And I definitely do not want to force anything down anyone’s throats. One of my radical notions is that people dialogue about differences… not to prove a point or make someone else agree but to hear what each person has to say and hopefully learn something new and useful. We are not so different, we have all of these fake barriers set up and modes of being that dehumanize and distance ourselves from our “opponents”, opponents being anyone who disagrees. My radical notion is that we break down those barriers and find the human connection again. I think real solutions could be created. I dunno, maybe I’m the nutcase but I think that’s a better solution than closing down schools that have high success rates and arresting pregnant women. The longer the get away with it the more empowered they will become and the more it will spread. No good can come from it.